The present invention provides systems and methods for accessing telescopes and, more particularly, to accessing a worldwide network of telescopes via a computer network such as the Internet.
Telescopes have become increasingly sophisticated since their development in the seventeenth century, and are an important tool for research, education and entertainment for both amateur and professional astronomers. Initially, telescopes allowed the user to observe the skies by simply looking into the eyepiece. In the 1930's, telescopic images were first captured on film. In the 1980's, electronic image capture was made possible by the advent of high quality charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras. Electronic image capturing coupled with remote control technology allowed the professional astronomer to operate a telescope in a more comfortable environment, such as a control room, where the images could be viewed on a CRT monitor. This notion of comfort was particularly important because telescope observatories are typically located in remote, high-altitude sites to minimize the thickness of atmosphere through which the light must travel to reach the telescope, and to avoid the negative effects of city lights.
During the 1990's, computer networks allowed the professional astronomer to control a telescope remotely and obtain image data from a remote location. The networks also allowed the astronomer to do work with many different observatories at the same time, using their in-depth knowledge and consulting with colleagues in the field to choose the most suitable observatory and telescope for each task. Typically, the professional astronomers, who were often associated with universities, had special access to the observatories and special knowledge of the availability and types of equipment.
The evolution of amateur astronomy has followed a similar path, but with some differences. The major difference is that the amateur's telescope is rarely mounted far from the observing site since maintaining a remote telescope site is expensive. Moreover, different settings, and even different telescopes are often required for observing various celestial objects. Again, the amateur typically does not have the resources of a well-equipped observatory.
Previous efforts have not provided a satisfactory solution. U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,227 to Edlund et al. “System and method for operating scientific instruments over wide area networks,” discusses a system that includes client computers for interacting with users to accept commands and display results, a proxy server computer for performing intermediate processing of commands and results, and a device server computer coupled to the remote device that executes the commands and generates the results.